4 uncomfortable questions Chris Wallace asked the candidates
After two acrimonious presidential debates, the third and final showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton finally offered some substantive discourse on serious issues, thanks to probing and unrelenting questions from moderator Chris Wallace.The Fox News host pressed the candidates on hot button issues, including sexual assault allegations against Trump, abortion rights, the Syrian conflict, and the national debt.On sexual assault allegations: “Why would so many different women from so many different circumstances over so many different years — why would they all in this last couple of weeks make up, you deny this, why would they all make up these stories? … Secretary Clinton, Mr. Trump says what your husband did and you defended was even worse.”In response to this question about women who have accused him of groping or kissing them against their will, Trump continued issuing a flat-out denial, claiming (without offering proof) that the allegations have been “mostly debunked.” His responded by claiming he didn’t know the women who had accused him and noted that “I didn’t even apologize to my wife, who’s sitting right here, because I didn’t do anything.” Trump also said he believed Clinton’s campaign had implored the women to make the accusations.Clinton responded by criticizing Trump’s defenses: “He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere doesn’t know what that feels like. So we now know what Donald thinks and what he says and how he acts toward women.” She did not address the question about sexual assault allegations involving her husband.On abortion: “Mr. Trump, you are pro-life. I would ask you specifically, do you want the court, including the justices that you will name, to overturn Roe v. Wade which includes, in fact states, a woman’s right to abortion?… I want to ask you Secretary Clinton, I want to explore how far you believe the right to abortion goes. You have been quoted as saying that the fetus has no constitutional rights. You also voted against a ban on late-term partial-birth abortions. Why?”Trump’s response was initially evasive: “Well, if that would happen because I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states.”Wallace then pressed him: “What I’m asking you, sir, is: Do you want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade?”Trump said his conservative judicial appointees would likely overturn the national protection for abortion created by the Roe v. Wade ruling, and then leave the decision up to the states.“It’ll happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court,” he said. In her response, Clinton said she would accept regulations as long as “the life and health of the mother are taken into account.”“The kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families to make,” Clinton said.On bloodshed in Syria: “Mr. Trump, in the last debate, you were both asked about the situation in the Syrian city of Aleppo and I want to follow up on that because you said several things in that debate which were not true, sir. You said that Aleppo has basically fallen. … If I may just finish here, and you also said that Syria and Russia are busy fighting ISIS, in fact they have been the ones who have been bombing and shelling eastern Aleppo and they just announced humanitarian pause, in effect admitting that they have been bombing and shelling Aleppo. Would you like to clear that up, sir? … Secretary Clinton, you have talked about, and in the last debate and again today, you would impose a no-fly zone to try to protect the people of Aleppo and stop the killing there. President Obama has refused to do that because he fears it’s going to draw us closer or deeper into the conflict.”Trump responded by calling the city “a disaster,” and blamed the crisis on Clinton, claiming that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, is “much tougher and much smarter than her and Obama.” Regarding the proposed no-fly zone, Clinton responded by saying she believed a no-fly zone would “save lives and could hasten the end of the conflict,” and would be possible after negotiations with Russia and Syria. On the national debt: “Why are you both ignoring this problem?” As the national debt has risen, critics have raised concerns about both candidates’ economic plans, arguing that each one will sink the nation deeper into debt.Trump said that his plan to bring foreign jobs back to Americans would create a “tremendous economic machine,” and argued that using business leaders rather than “political hacks” to negotiate trade deals could solve the problem. Clinton responded by saying that her proposed plans would not “add a penny to the national debt,” and would grow the economy by getting large companies to “pay their fair share.”
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